


Coping Mechanism

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: For a Century: Astra Shepard x Liara T'Soni [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Colonist (Mass Effect), F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mindoir, Renegade Commander Shepard, Ruthless (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard's demons visit in the night, sometimes; no matter how she wishes they stay dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Animals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories of Mindoir.

The night after she meets the girl, Shepard can’t sleep.

Talitha. A frightened girl with a gun, drowning in memories of Mindoir, convinced she was an animal. Shepard saw it in her eyes, the smoke and the fires roaring across the farmlands. Shepard remembered working in the fields with Mom and Dad, wading in the streams in high summer, bringing home fat fish for dinner. She remembered the taste of ash and concrete dust in her mouth, mingled with the copper tang of blood. She remembered the throb of her heart, so painful she thought she might die from the terror of it. She remembered Mom’s sightless eyes, the weight of rubble holding down her legs, Dad’s face nothing but a scooped-out shell of pulverized bone and meat.

She told the girl to be strong. Told her that if she had survived this long as a slave, she could face the past. The girl took the sedative and as she drifted to sleep, she felt so light in Shepard’s arms, light like thistledown caught in one of the evening breezes.

Shepard told Girard the girl had been a waste of her time. Maybe if she thought of it that way, the old memories would not see cause to return.

But now she’s sitting in her cabin, hunched on the edge of her bed, hands rubbing her thighs as if she can anchor herself to this world and this time by clinging to the physical. She is here, not in the old farm house with ivy clinging to the walls, insects droning in the heat; here, not in the choke of flame or the roar of batarian voices. She shivers and instead of the soft hum of the ship she hears children screaming, screaming. She wonders what it would be like if she had not been half-crushed by the rubble. She wonders if she would have known Talitha then, two lonely humans clinging together in the camps, fear and suffering binding them together. Maybe she would have been an animal, too.

Maybe, though, they are all animals. The muscles in her throat work, swallowing convulsively. Batarian faces stare back at her from the ground, their weapons laid down beside them, their eyes forever accusing her. She sees again the humans littered among them. So much blood. The reds and purples. Her finger on the trigger, her hands shaking, her stomach churning. She’d wanted this. She’d gotten it.

She tries not to think about what lies under her bed, but she can’t stop herself. She reaches for the emergency bottle she keeps there, and she drains more of it than she means to. It isn’t a good sleep she falls into, but it’s a sleep, and sometimes that is all that animals deserve.


	2. Whisky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After resurrection, the world is still badly made.

Shepard stood in the port observation deck, casting a leery eye at a hooded woman who wore a knowing look. Strangers all around her, it seemed. No, no, that wasn’t precisely true; Joker still flew a ship beautifully, Dr. Chakwas’ hands still practiced medicine. But the ship rang with the voices of the unknown, a cold and beautiful woman, a scarred and blustering assassin, a savvy man with second thoughts about those he served. Shepard nodded to Kasumi and turned to the bar instead.

She was sure Kasumi noticed when she took the bottle, hiding it inside the lapel of her Cerberus jacket; she was sure the other woman thought it a pitifully amateur thieving job. Shepard didn’t care. She made her way to her cabin, her stupidly spacious cabin (who devotes this much room to an officer on a warship, she thought), and she pulled the top off the bottle. She had not bothered stealing a glass. That was fine. Who needed portions? She flicked on her bedside radio, blaring club music. It put her in mind of asari gyrating around a pole, writhing, their blue skin glistening under bright neon. 

The burn of whisky in her throat was a hallmark to her life before. Hadn’t she raised a glass with Ashley and Joker, remembering Kaidan? Hadn’t she introduced it to Liara, laughing when the asari made a face and sputtered? She remembered the way Liara had tasted when they kissed, the loveliness of her mouth cut with the sharpness of scotch. Her hand fumbled on her desk, gripping the datapad with a picture of Liara’s face. She had scoured the news reports from the geth attack on the Citadel until she had found the pictures of herself, Liara, and Ash, saving the profile shot of the asari. Illium, the Illusive Man had said. When the hell was she supposed to get to Illium? She had to save the fucking world. Again. Did Liara even know she was alive?

Her head swam; her vision blurred. The music pounded in her ears. Apparently the cybernetics glittering at her cheeks and brows had not acclimated yet to alcohol. “Give it time,” she said. Her voice in the empty cabin was a ghost’s. She drank again, her esophagus scarcely protesting, already getting used to the burn. It was a feeling she had long been familiar with before, especially after Mindoir. After Torfan.

Biotics tingled at Shepard’s fingertips, a warp aching to be released. She forced it back and the effort made her tremble. She wanted to kill something. She wanted to fuck something. She wanted to feel anything. 

Miranda had assured her that she had been brought back complete, a woman unto herself. Yet Shepard could feel the crackle of unfamiliar electricity in her nervous system, the strange new flexibility in her spine, the reflexes that were just a touch too quick to be human. She was not herself. She was something different. Whether good or bad, she could not tell. All she could tell was the taste of whisky in an empty cabin, and it tasted like scorched earth and regrets.

Alcohol blurred the next few hours. She remembered tearing her blankets in half, frantically ripping them until only shreds remained. She remembered her hand twisting beneath her waistband, moving in time to the music, picturing Liara with her eyes dark and her lips parted and sweat beading on her forehead. She remembered slumping next to the toilet, her head hanging over the side, her gut roiling as she retched again and again.

When she came to her head was pounding, and her mouth tasted foul. She wiped off her lips on the back of her hand and staggered upright, breathing heavily through her nose. 

Enough of this self-indulgent shit, she told herself. Time to be a big damn hero. 

She changed into fresh Cerberus fatigues, and she washed her face. Shepard wasn’t herself. But she was someone, and that someone was still here, still fighting.

She had work to do.


End file.
